Point of No Return (10 page)

“Now listen,” Malcolm began, “I only asked you because I was genuinely curious. When you see someone whom you haven't seen for years—”

Charles interrupted him before he could finish and he was beginning to enjoy the conversation.

“Why don't you say what you really mean?” Charles asked. “You mean you want to fill in the end of a case history about likable Tom Smith from Dartmouth.” He shrugged his shoulders. “You and that bird man in the bar were talking about it before I came in, weren't you? I don't mind. I rather like being a part of case history.”

“That's true,” Malcolm said. “I was telling him, Charley, you've got a damned tough mind.”

“I have to have one,” Charles said. “I've cultivated it, I suppose. There are a lot of tough minds in New York.”

“Oh no,” Malcolm said. “You haven't cultivated it. You've always had a tough mind, Charley, and a sensitive disposition. Clyde was full of minds like that.”

“Never mind Clyde,” Charles said. “Go ahead and ask me questions.”

“All right,” Malcolm said. “Never mind Clyde. What have you been doing, Charley?”

Charles looked at his plate. It was empty. He had finished the main course of the lunch without knowing what it was and now the waiter was taking away the plate.

“Well,” he said, “I met someone in Boston once who asked me to look him up in New York. That was when I was working in E. P. Rush & Company. I got a job in the statistical department at the Stuyvesant and I did well enough so I held it through the depression. I married a girl who worked downtown in a law office. We have two children, and we've built a house in the suburbs that I'm still paying for, and now there's a vice-presidential vacancy. It rests between me and another man, who has a tough mind too. That's about all I've been doing.”

Malcolm had lighted another cigarette, cupping his hands carefully around the match as though he were in a wind.

“I always said you were a nice boy, Charley.”

“Thanks,” Charles said. Thank you, Malcolm.”

“Of course you haven't filled in many details,” Malcolm said. “For instance, do you love your wife?”

“I thought you'd ask that,” Charles answered, “and the answer is yes. I love my wife. I love my home and my children.”

“I thought you would. You're an essentially monogamous type.” Malcolm Bryant sat there looking at him. “So you've been to the war.” It was that discharge button that Nancy had put in his coat lapel.

“Yes,” Charles said. “I'd forgotten about the button.”

“I was in the war, too,” Malcolm said. “In the OSS.”

“As long as it wasn't the OWI” Charles said. “As a matter of fact, I saw the Orinoco.” He paused a moment. “From the air.”

“On your way to Africa?”

“Yes,” Charles said. “It was one of those missions, before I was assigned to the Eighth. I was only good for staff work—the bank, you know.”

“And now you're back don't you ever feel restless?”

“No,” Charles said, “I'm not restless. I didn't like the army. Most civilians don't.”

“Well, let's put it another way. Don't you ever get to wondering what everything's about?”

“Naturally, but what's the use in wondering? I'm doing the best I can.”

“Let's put it still another way,” Malcolm said. “Do you ever wonder whether everything is worth while?”

“It's a little hard to answer that one,” Charles said. “I'm just Tom Smith from Dartmouth, trying to get along.”

Malcolm must have known that he would not say any more, yet Charles had inadvertently told a good deal. He could almost see himself as Malcolm must have seen him, and this unexpected mental picture was close to his own impression of himself without the customary apologies and excuses.

“You're still thinking about that book of mine, aren't you?” Malcolm asked.

“Your categories and groupings bother me,” Charles said. “I like individuals, not groupings. It doesn't make any difference where anyone comes from, it seems to me.”

“Now look here, Charley,” Malcolm said, “whether you like it or not, everybody's in a category.”

“Yes,” Charles answered, “but you're trying to put me in a category and keep out of one yourself. It isn't really fair. There weren't so many classes. Clyde's a pretty democratic place.”

“I thought you said never mind Clyde,” Malcolm told him. “Just remember that no matter what sort of system he lives under, man still stays the same.”

“Do you mean to say that a political system doesn't change the mental habits of individuals?” Charles asked. “What about fascism? What about communism?”

“It doesn't matter,” Malcolm answered. “All ideologies arise from instincts. You can't change instincts. Man is always the same.”

It was getting to be one of those conversations that would never get anywhere and it was too heavy a one for lunch.

“Well, it's nice to know it,” Charles said, “even though the left wing doesn't agree with you. It must be nice to sit there and be able to talk like God Almighty.”

Malcolm pushed the end of his cigarette carefully into the ash tray.

“Charley, do you believe in God Almighty?”

“Yes,” Charles said, “I think I do. It may be early habit. Yes, I do, since you ask me.”

Malcolm leaned his elbows on the table and Charles saw that his coat fitted him very badly.

“Well, if you were to pin me down to it, so do I,” he said.

It must have been the mention of God that made Charles think of time. He looked at his watch and it was a quarter after two.

“I've got to go,” he said, and suddenly he realized that he had found out nothing, or almost nothing, about Malcolm Bryant.

“Don't go,” Malcolm was saying. “We've only just begun to talk.”

Charles pushed back his chair. “You've got to be taking off to New Guinea,” he said.

They were both walking side by side between the tables and he was sorry that it was over.

“I wish you hadn't made me talk about myself all the time,” he said.

They were out of the dining room and Charles had tossed his brass check on the coatroom counter when Malcolm put his hand on his arm.

“Charley,” he said, “you've got a lot of guts.”

“How do you mean, guts?” Charles asked.

“Saying what you do,” Malcolm said, “doing what you do, takes guts. You're a very nice boy, Charley.”

“I wish,” Charles said, “you'd stop calling me a nice boy.”

“Well, you are,” Malcolm said, “and it takes guts to be your type, these days. Good-by, good luck, Charley.”

“Put me down in Category E,” Charles said. “Good luck, Malcolm, and thanks.”

“Thanks for what?” Malcolm asked.

“Since you ask me, I don't exactly know,” Charles said, “but thanks.”

5

Everything Fits into Banking Somewhere

Though common sense told Charles that he should hurry, some other inner impulse made him walk with perverse slowness, as you did when you tried to hurry in a dream. The sun had finally broken through the clouds and the sky was almost entirely blue and when he reached Fifth Avenue he came to a stop. He saw the sunlight hit the wings of a plane that must have risen from La Guardia Field just a minute or so before, and in spite of the noise on the Avenue he could hear the drumming of the motors. The green lights were on and he watched the steady flow of the traffic as though the sight were new to him—yellow cabs, green-and-white cabs, and the new buses, so different from the old ones with the open tops. The sun was still high enough to shine through some plate-glass windows on a display of men's colored shirts—maroons, blues, salmon pinks and canary yellows. He still could not get used to colored shirts even though they were quite the thing now to wear at the country club on Sunday.

Everything was changing and Fifth Avenue was changing too, in spite of all the efforts of the Fifth Avenue Association; but then Fifth Avenue had always been in a state of flux, with old buildings coming down and new ones going up, the old ones crumbling into rubble and being poured into the wreckers' trucks. It was always changing, but the spirit of it was still as young, confident, and blatant as when Henry James had written of it long ago. It still conveyed the same message that it had when he had walked along it on that first visit with his father. The motion of it had the same strength and eagerness, so different from the more stately motion of Piccadilly and the Strand.

“Easter Parade” by Irving Berlin … He had gone with Nancy to that musical show and it must have been in the winter of 1934 when they still lived in a walk-up apartment on West Eighteenth Street. They had paid Mrs. Sweeney, whose husband was a policeman, a dollar to sit listening for the baby, and they had not been to the theater once that year or the year before. 'Thirty-four had been bad enough, though nothing to 'thirty-three. They had gone to dinner in a small French restaurant and had taken the bus up Fifth Avenue and had walked across to Broadway. When the chorus had sung that song about Fifth Avenue he had been holding Nancy's hand, just as he used to when he took her to the Capitol before they were married.… He must have been deathly tired because he had dozed off in the darkness in the middle of it and she had dug her elbow in his ribs and he still remembered her whisper.

“Wake up. Don't waste your money sleeping.”

It had been quite a while, in fact not since he had been upstairs at the Stuyvesant, since anyone had made a remark to him about staying out too long at lunch; and there was never the slightest criticism now that he was downstairs, at a desk near the front window. There was still the inner compulsion never to be late, but at the same time it was your privilege. Tardiness could be excused on the assumption that you were having a business lunch with a client. Nevertheless, Charles knew that Miss Marble and Joe had been wondering where he had been, and it did not help to see that Roger Blakesley was busy at his desk already. Charles repressed an instinct to hurry and hang up his hat and coat but instead he walked slowly past the desks and stopped where Miss Marble was typing and asked her if there was anything new.

“Nothing new,” Miss Marble said. “I called up Mrs. Gray and told her you couldn't catch the five-thirty. She said to remember that you're going to the country club tonight.”

“It isn't tonight, is it?” Charles asked.

“You didn't tell me to put it on the calendar,” Miss Marble said, “but Mrs. Gray said to remind you.”

“Well, call her again and tell her I'll meet her there,” Charles said. “I'll get there as soon as I can, but I'll be late.”

He stopped in front of the washroom mirror to see that his tie was straight. His short, sandy hair was in order and he looked competent and carefree. It was time to put the luncheon out of his mind. Malcolm had said that he was a nice boy, Charley, and he was not a nice boy any longer. He did not look the way he had at Clyde, though even there his mother had always said that he had the Gray high cheekbones and the Gray pointed chin. The roundness had gone out of his face. There were wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and his mouth was tighter but there was no gray in his hair. It was not the face that he used to have but it still looked young.

“Charley,” he heard Malcolm Bryant saying, “it takes guts to be your type, these days. Good-by, good luck, Charley.”

He was still not sure whether or not Malcolm Bryant had been laughing at him. Businessmen were not on the pinnacle they had once occupied. It was hard sometimes to tell the difference between strength of mind and habit.

The tellers' cages would close at three and already, as was usual in the afternoon, the pace was growing more leisurely. There were always new problems in the morning but these grew old by afternoon, fitting with still older problems into a symmetrical design so that you had a sense of everything running smoothly, a sense of teamwork, if you wanted to call it that, or what Mr. Burton called a meshing of the gears. You could think of the whole system of capital, of rates, discounts, markets and production, as running without interruption, like the traffic on the Avenue.

Charles had devised a system that permitted him to examine every trust account personally at least once a month, and now Miss Marble brought to his cleared desk the ones which he was to review that day. As he thanked her and settled himself in his chair, he glanced across at Roger Blakesley. Roger's desk was heaped with piles of papers. It was a habit of Roger's to shove a great many papers around in the afternoon, especially toward closing time.

“Hello there, Charley,” Roger said. “Everything's backing up on me.”

Charles knew this was not true but it gave the picture that Roger wanted, a picture of heavy and unremitting labor.

“You're back early,” Charles said. “I thought you were going to have lunch with Tony.”

“He canceled it,” Roger said. “Something came up the last minute.” Roger took off his glasses and polished them. When his glasses were off, his blinking eyes gave him a vacant, guileless look. “Are you going to the country club tonight?”

“Yes,” Charles said, “but I'm afraid I'll be late.”

“Who was that bird you went to lunch with?”

There was no privacy. Everyone heard everything, particularly Roger.

“A man I used to know,” Charles said, and then some impulse made him explain it further. “He's an anthropologist.”

“A what?”

Then Charles knew that it would have been better not to have mentioned it. It was just the sort of thing that Roger would remember.

“An anthropologist.”

“He looked like a teacher in business school,” Roger said. “One of those ‘if you can't do, teach' boys.”

As far as Charles could tell, everything in Roger's career had stemmed from his stay at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration, where business was the oldest of the arts but the newest of the professions. He had to admit that Roger used his academic background adroitly, extracting the last drop from it. Roger was always saying it was a great place, the Harvard Business School. When you studied under the Case system, you became aware of practicality and theories at the same time. It was a proving ground, the Harvard Business School, and it paid to keep up with it afterwards. If you were to ask Roger, but you did not have to ask him, this proving ground was directly accountable for the record he had made at the Guaranty before he had come to the Stuyvesant. He had been asked to come to the Stuyvesant and before accepting, of course, there had been certain reservations in his mind, but he had never regretted the step after taking it. There were fine fellows at the Stuyvesant, like Tony Burton and Steve Merry, and good boys like Charley Gray, fellows who always stuck together without getting out the old stiletto and inserting it between the shoulder blades.